Chamber tours Serta Mattress

    If you haven't come across the fluffy fellow pictured above while channel surfing, you are one of only a handful of Americans who have not yet been exposed to Serta Mattress Inc.'s massive marketing campaign featuring the disgruntled Counting Sheep.
    The sheep, according to commercials, have been put out of a job by Serta and the perfect night's sleep their mattresses provide. The likable characters are part of a multi-million dollar brand-building campaign designed to distinguish Serta from rival mattress companies, as members of the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce Existing Business and Industry tour group learned on a recent tour of the company's Cullman facility.
    "We know we make the world's best mattress; that's out motto," said Dallas Shannon, one third of the plant's tri-management team and the company's sales manager. "It's been challenged in court and the other guys lost, so there must be something to it."

Serta Sales Manager Dallas Shannon, one third of the Cullman plant's unique "tri-management" team, explains product flow and materials use to the Chamber tour group.

Shannon explained that Serta is the number two company in a highly competitive $40 billion per year industry that includes some 700 mattress manufacturers. According to Shannon, Serta has some 30 total plants, nine of which - including the Cullman plant - are owned by National Bedding Company. For the last three to four years, Shannon noted, eight of those nine have been among the top ten Serta plants overall.

The Serta showroom, where their product line and their marketing materials are displayed. One of the Counting Sheep was seemingly fast asleep on a Serta Perfect Sleeper when the Chamber tour group arrived.

    "We pride ourselves in the people we have and we pride ourselves in out marketing," Shannon said. "We're gaining on our competition on a daily basis."
    Shannon went on to describe a company and a facility thoroughly dedicated to creating a quality product. From a plant floor layout designed to maximize efficiency to a system of quality inspection in which employees in each area inspect and double check the work done in previous areas, Serta is serious about quality and accountability.
    Even the often joked about mattress tags - which read "do not remove under penalty of law" - serve the ideal of accountability by allowing quality inspectors to identify the workers who assembled each and every mattress. As each assembler uses a different shade of colored glue and other identifying materials, flaws and defects can be traced back to an individual who must then repair the mistake before going off shift for the day.

The Cullman plant has an employee roster of approximately 90 people, nine of which make up the sales team. An additional 18-19 employees are in office and administrative positions, leaving the remainder in production.

When it comes to production, the Serta plant seemingly has the process of manufacturing down to an art, averaging 1,200 pieces per day shipped during their peak season and between 890 and 900 on an average day. In addition to a high production rate, Serta also boasts a 99.92 percent on-time delivery rate, which, according to co-manager Shannon, is almost unheard of in the mattress industry.
The Cullman plant serves 137 retailers as of this writing, with some 16 more to be added within 90 days. Those retailers can be found all over the southeast and beyond as Serta's Cullman plant currently ships to stores in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia and Georgia. Several local stores such as Badcock and Green-Tiffin Furniture carry Serta mattresses as well.

Serta's Dallas Shannon shows the padding that goes into a Serta
mattress to Chamber tour group members Denise Box and Cullman
County Industrial Development Board member Gerald Sims.

Located in the Cullman Industrial Park, Serta has been an area presence for over 25 years. The company moved to its present location in February 1997. The new plant has 87,500 square feet of space dedicated to manufacturing alone and room to expand, an action deemed probable by Serta's management team, who say their company is distancing itself from competitors every day.

Chamber tour group members Steve Singleton of Bryan Business Solutions, Steven Moore of the City of Cullman Economic Development Office, and Keith Jackson and Gerald Sims with the Cullman County Industrial Development Board listen as Dallas Shannon explains the components of a Serta mattress.

     "We're proud of our work force and the product they put out," said Steve Sparks, plant manager and part of Serta's tri-management team along with Shannon and controller Michael Lopez. "Our sales staff could be the best in the world, but if you put out a substandard product, if you put out junk, sales will go down."
     And that certainly doesn't seem to be the case as Serta has a less than two percent return rate due to quality problems. On a product with a lifespan of six to 12 years (depending on care and upkeep), that is quite a feat.
     Serta manufactures several mattress lines, each of which are available in the standard twin, full, queen and king sizes. The queen size is Serta's best seller in this particular region, with prices ranging from $199 for a basic set to a $4,000 for a luxury set. The average queen set sells for $799.
     For more information on Serta Mattress and their products, visit www.serta.com, an informative and entertaining website that contains, in addition to product information, full versions of the Counting Sheep advertising spots and a store containing Counting Sheep products.

Scenes from the plant floor
At left, a bed frame is rapidly assembled by a skilled Serta
employee. Above, a Serta worker oversees the operation
of a giant quilting machine on the floor of the Cullman plant.

Before and After
One of the more amazing parts of the Serta tour was witnessing the methods used to ship mattress springs. In this series of pictures, one can see that 16 springs sets have been compressed into the space occupied by roughly two spring sets. They are bound with metal bands and shipped vertically to conserve space, each package of springs compacted to a pressure level of 20,000 lbs. per square inch. Once the plant receives the bound springs, they are placed in a special machine that aids in safe decompression. The bands are then clipped, allowing the spring sets to elongate to their full height to await mattress construction.


B.J. Williams of Woodland Medical Center, Denise Box of Best Western and several other members of the Chamber tour group stage their own comfort test of Serta's Perfect Sleeper mattresses prior to the tour's beginning.	An exterior view of the Cullman Serta plant, located in Cullman Industrial Park.